REPAIR OF FAILED FIRMWARE THROUGH AN UNMODIFIED DUAL-ROLE COMMUNICATION PORT

A repair engine for a computing platform is separate from the repeatedly-rewritten storage components for software and firmware. For example, the repair engine may reside in ROM or hardware logic. Through dedicated connections to one or more controllers, the repair engine detects when any of the platform's dual-role ports (e.g., on-the-go USB ports) is connected to a host device. The repair engine responds by opening firmware-independent communication with the host device and supporting the downloading and execution (DnX) of a firmware image from the host. Because the communication is initiated independently of the firmware, even a catastrophic firmware failure is repairable without requiring a user to identify and use a specially modified port.